UnderWhere
SOLO EXHIBITION BY:
featuring Iyan de Jesus
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There is something fascinating about a butterfly’s metamorphosis that inspires one to view life as a continuous process of endless rebirths. In existential philosophy, one has to dance to various rhythms, oftentimes slowing but never pausing, yet still remains fully accountable on what is included in the playlist and when it is time to get into a new set of choreographies.
I Wish I Was The Moon Tonight
She sits alone in her room looking up the window and in a minute she’ll forget she is ever at home. The light towering above overwhelms her in a way that her heart beats as if seduced by something that promises an eternal sense of belonging or a rightful place to be. She loses herself in this ethereal connection, closing her eyes but never losing sense of its light. “You are 70% water, you are 70% wild.” The sea, the most gracious of all lunatics, flows in her veins.
Where Clocks Are Barely Breathing
“It’s a privilege to be thristy for something.” She had already forgotten where she heard or read it before. She’s 25 and she just walked out of the office building door for the last time carrying a box full of stuff. She never thought clichés can feel very strange in real life. She dives deeper within herself as she settles on her commute back home, finally feeling the crashing weight of her eventual transformation and her pledge for growth. Pursuing passions may soon feel like a long journey through a desert, yet she believes that one blooms only when one tolerates the sun and made peace with being drenched in water. “The reciprocation of love is exclusively for the brave.”
Ransom Notes Keep Falling Off Your Mouth
She was a child who stayed on top of trees, wandering about the latest bigbang she manifested that afternoon. Her eyes stick to walls and her ears can fly faster than light. Her mind is full of worlds she imagined or assumed and somewhere within her is a multiverse of scenarios, a series of unspoken monologs, and conversations that could have happened but never will. She fills the blanks between realities with a criss-cross of equations in order to deliver the truth.
Helen Of Troy
She heats her coffee with the fire of burning cities. She rests her glory as the waves take her to wherever the gods deemed her to be. She was never apathetic to applauses, oh, far from it! She would gladly bask under a spotlight forever if she could, yet still, she thought these wars were an overreaction. On afternoons before sundown she used to sneak out to the river and pretended to be a free-flowing nymph. All love has its consequence, even a river is stuck on its course.
In My Own Little Golden Age
Lighter and lighter and off she go! She’s on top of the world dancing on mountaintops and loving every minute of it. A surreal invinsibility surrounds her dispositions. Every movement feels like a fluttering of wings. In that moment, nothing can ever hurt her.
Learning How The Grown-Ups Dream
One early morning after 10 years of rain, she finally woke up into the clearest bluest sky. All the dark clouds that once conquered her horizons seem to have disappeared into thin air. Under the sun while still half-soaked in water, the seeds she sowed grew and now she is learning how to let the bees come near. In the light of the day, everything flourished and everything starts to feel real.
Rushing Firewater In The Dark Of The Cloud
Eventually, her world kept on growing until her comfort zone turned into a swamp where kindred creatures thrive. Lush greens under a setting sun, she still have storms stirring within her heart but now she can keep her feet steady on top of swaying branches even amidst the strongest winds.
Splashing Up A Fantasy
It comes, sometimes without warning. It takes the mind out of the body and into a predatory future. She reminded herself to breathe, that all colors are harmless and that their inherent meanings are all subjective. She felt the ground beneath her feet, she thought it’s strange how the texture of a pebbled path could make her feel safe.
The Sweeping Insensitivity Of This Still Life
“Not all that glitters is gold, yet what if it’s palladium or rhodium? Does the pond on the other side of the swamp have rarer birds to serve you tea? Is it earl grey or chamomile like what we have here or do they have tropical flavors?” She wishes she has the time to walk around the woods and see if other spots can give her the excitement she longs for. Maybe she’s oblivious, certainly she is naive. For now she stays here, longing for a day she’ll have the freedom to choose her own consequences.
Euphoria Mixed With Existential Vertigo
It passes as soon as it hits – like a speeding train, like a tornado. One thing she learned the hard way is that life is never about its sharpest spikes but on how one manages to return to a state of stable equilibrium. Too much light may be blinding, as much as it is numbing. You are more likely to find yourself beyond your edges.
Hold No Grudge
Her heart on a platter, holding no more space for grudges. Her arms are full of portals to the most calming and most accepting of all white noises. Finally, she finds that lightness is no longer unbearable.
Lilies
The next morning, she finds herself on her bed with the echoes of her past selves receding to the back of her mind. She then hears a clear call and when she turns to it she finds a place that is almost here but is also somewhere else. Her once small yet familiar room now stretches across unknown horizons. It is a merging of dimensions that is never meant for logic. She can feel herself expanding with it and she knows she can live like that for as long as life permits. From here on, every night as she falls asleep, she will look forward to waking up again.
“UnderWhere” is a series about transcendence from one phase of self to another. Each piece is a story about learning and unlearning, and eventually learning better. It dives beyond merely getting from point A to the greener pastures of point B, and instead focuses on the process of loving and accepting the bittersweet melodramatic yet beautiful, intoxicating, humbling, freeing and nurturing whirlwind ride in between.
As the artist explained, “This is a pat on the back for that girl who was begging with all her heart for life to love her back. Growth is non-linear, she’s been everywhere and nowhere at the same time, but she’s still gone far.”
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